


Such Everyday Miracles

by shellcollector



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Canon Era, Gen, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, References to Illness, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 10:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7218883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellcollector/pseuds/shellcollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a tumblr prompt: "Courfeyrac and Joly, patching up a wound".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such Everyday Miracles

They were still out of breath when they reached Joly’s apartment. Courfeyrac headed for the sofa and flung himself onto it.

“Keep your arm raised in the air,” said Joly, not joining him, looking around the room for a box of supplies and for something else, a footstep, another breath, a face. He found the box, but nothing else.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I did something else with it?” asked Courfeyrac. “I’m finding it somewhat difficult to keep the blood away from the sofa cushions.”

“Blood is a liquid, my friend,” said Joly, hunting through the box for the right needle. “It pulses with the rhythm of the heart, for sure. But it has tides, as well, and currents, and little eddies. The tourniquet has dammed most of the flow, I think, but we don’t want to waste a drop, especially since rather a lot ended up on the pavement already. Just now the pull of the earth’s mass is holding as much as possible inside your body, until I can get it stitched. Now, if only I had a magnet…”

“I’m sure you could draw the blood up from the paving stones and back into my arm,” Courfeyrac smiled. “But then again, if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be an omnibus.”

“Quite right,” agreed Joly. “We must accept realities and act accordingly. Speaking of which, I’m afraid I must hurt you a little.”

“I suspected as much,” said Courfeyrac. “Well, I hurt a little already, so I dare say I’ll manage. More importantly, will you be able to rescue my poor coat?”

Joly inspected it. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “It’s quite beyond repair. You might patch the hole, but the blood is quite set into the fabric and one of the buttons is smashed. No, you’ll have to find a new one.”

He felt his throat, for no clear reason, begin to swell as he talked, and his eyes to water. He tried to keep his voice even, but his vocal cords seemed already in spasm.

“All right,” he said. “you can let the arm drop, now.”

He helped Courfeyrac out of the coat.

“It’s a shame,” said Courfeyrac,  “It’s very nicely cut and I had grown rather fond of it, though of course I have others. I do hope we live in a republic by now; if we have any more battles like this one it will wreak havoc on my wardrobe.”

Joly’s throat still felt frozen and numb, and he was mentally running through the symptoms of tetany, but that didn’t stop him from observing that Courfeyrac, for all his cheeriness, was pale, or that he kept wincing for a fraction of a second before contracting his face once more into a smile.

“There,” he said, as he cut away the bloody shirt from either side of the tourniquet - Courfeyrac’s cravat, which was also altogether ruined. “Now I’ll wash the wound and sew you up.”

“You doctors are so blasé about things little short of miraculous,” said Courfeyrac, a note of laughter in his voice. “Combeferre is the same. He removed an enormous tumour the other day and discussed it as casually as if he had bought a new hat.”

“I am sorry to disappoint you,” said Joly. “It isn’t that I don’t find myself reflecting on how splendid it all is, and how many new things are becoming possible. But it is difficult to keep the miracle from becoming everyday. That’s a shame, I suppose.”

“Not at all,” said Courfeyrac. “I think it fills me with even more optimism. I would like to think that all the sorrows of our age will eventually be mended as easily as a pair of boots, and with no more fuss.”

“I think that’s right,” said Joly. “We are just beginning to understand how the heart may be repaired, or the stomach, or the nerves. The men of the future will be surprised, I think, at how calamitous a fever could be, or a cancer. And they’ll be just as surprised that it took us so much pain and violence to win a prosperity which will feel so easy and a freedom so natural. And you see, just like that, I am finished.”

Joly tied off the catgut in a knot.

“Quite so,” said Courfeyrac. “I like hearing you speak like this. Thank you for providing such excellent distraction. You calmed my nerves beautifully.”

His lips were pressed together very tightly, but curled into a smile that was almost humorous. For a brief moment Joly wondered who, exactly, had been distracting whom.

“There’s one last thing,” he said. “I must release the tourniquet. That will hurt rather a lot as the circulation returns, but not for too long.”

“Well then, let’s get on with it,” said Courfeyrac, almost gaily.

Joly cut at the cravat with his scissors, and felt Courfeyrac’s arm tense as the pressure was released. But he was pleased to see that the flesh was pinkening nicely.

“It was almost numb, before, below where you bound it,” said Courfeyrac, gritting his teeth. “I felt a pain, but I couldn’t have told you exactly where it was. Now I know, and I wish I didn’t.”

“The nerves were compressed, along with the arteries,” said Joly. “Those carry blood, and the nerves carry feeling.”

“Fascinating,” said Courfeyrac. “And does that obey the tides as well? It certainly seems to be pulsing, like waves on the surface of water.”

“That is an interesting thought,” said Joly, “and I must investigate it. For now, though, I suggest that you try to sleep. My bed is ideally aligned to optimise circulation, and it is only in the next room.”

He helped Courfeyrac into the bedroom.

“By the way,” said Courfeyrac, “did you happen to see any of the others on our way back here? I was trying to look out for them, but I’m afraid I was rather preoccupied with my own worries.”

“I didn’t, no,” said Joly. “But I’m sure they’re all holed up in Enjolras’ rooms right now, sharing a bottle of wine.”

“Perhaps you should join them.”

“I don’t think I can. You may still come down with a fever, and besides, what if they decided to head here at exactly the moment I decided to head out? No, we’re better off waiting for them to come to us.”

His voice was starting to croak again, and he hurried out of the room to go and pull the relevant books off the shelf. But as he was scanning the spines he heard a movement at the door, then a scuffling and stamping, and then a knock. He went to open it.

It was Bossuet, his trousers ripped but apparently unhurt. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. “Not only because I seem to have lost my key, but also - well, anyway, how is Courfeyrac? The others are perfectly fine, by the way, all across at Enjolras’ apartment, but I thought you’d still be here. And well, here you are.”

Joly nodded, coughed, and blinked. “Courfeyrac is doing well,” he began, but his voice failed him. He tried again. “I managed to stitch up the artery. He is sleeping. I’m glad — I mean, I wasn’t sure —”

And then Bossuet’s arms were around him, pulling him in. Joly’s eyes filled with tears. He tried to breathe evenly, but he felt that he might choke. Bossuet was warm, and close, and terribly alive. Joly felt himself start to shake as he returned the embrace.

“I think I might have tetanus,” he said quietly, into Bossuet’s shoulder.


End file.
